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"The fifth commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill,' is no commandment of God but a Jewish invention."
Nazi Ministerial Councilor Eugen Stahle wrote the above in his haughty response to a protest by Reinhold Sautter, the Supreme Church Councilor of Wurttemberg's State Church. Sautter, as did numerous German protestant and Catholic clergymen, had raised fervent objections to the program of eugenics initiated in 1939 at the orders of Third Reich leader Adolf Hitler.
Referred to after the war as "Aktion T4," the program called for the "weeding out" of the weak and infirm, to reduce the "burden" on a society in the process of preparing for all-out war and to improve the gene pool. Conducted with the complicity of physicians, nurses and medical administrators, it was to result in at least 70,273 patients at psychiatric hospitals and other facilities being sent to extermination centers. The actual number of victims will never be known.
Techniques for mass murder of the disabled and infirm initially adopted by Aktion T4 were to have far-reaching repercussions, as they were put to use not long thereafter on a much greater scale against Jews, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, political prisoners and other "undesirables" who perished in the Holocaust.
But, asks J-Cast News (July 27), was Satoshi Uematsu -- the 26-year-old man police accused of killing 19 mentally disabled residents of Tsukui Yamayuri-en in the early morning hours of July 25 -- on familiar terms with Nazi eugenics policies?
Following his arrest, Uematsu told the police he felt that euthanasia of the disabled was justifiable. It also came out that earlier this year he had sent a letter to the speaker of the Diet's lower house suggesting that he could "kill 470 disabled people."
A column called "Hissen" -- the word means a vessel for washing calligraphy brushes, but is used as a homonym for "war of words" -- appearing in the morning edition of Tokyo Shimbun (July 27), asked the question, "Why did the suspect [Uematsu] grab onto the steering wheel of a 'gray bus?'"
In explanation of the above, J-Cast News shows a grainy, undated archival photo of disabled patients in Europe being helped aboard a "gray bus" for transport to an extermination center.
An editorial appearing in the same edition of Tokyo Shimbun attempted to analyze Uematsu's action, stating, "With this, we can also catch a glimpse of the philosophy of eugenics, which sought to eliminate the 'inferior presence' of the disabled."
The Asahi Shimbun, meanwhile, reported a flood of tweets that discussed the evils of the Nazi program.
"Do you think you're Hitler?" one poster rhetorically asked Uematsu. "It looks to me like you've been taken in by Nazi philosophy."
The day following the killings, the Otsu City-based Japanese Association of/for People with Intellectual disabilities, a national support group based in made up of 55 organizations in all 47 of Japan's prefectures, issued the following statement:
"The suspect in this incident has made statements to the effect that he denies respect for the lives of disabled people. However, each one of our children, whatever their disability, regard their lives as important and live eagerly. We families care for them, supporting their steps one at a time. Each life that was cruelly taken was irreplaceable. The person who committed this crime must face it squarely and recognize the gravity of his act."
"The essence of Nazism has yet to dissipate, and recurs in various forms," remarked Marei Mentlein, a translator who appears on the German-language lessons broadcast on NHK's educational channel.
© Japan Today
20 Comments
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Yubaru
People everywhere are trying to find blame somewhere other than where it should be...squarely on HIM.
gaijinfo
Maybe. Or maybe he was inspired by a talking dog like Son of Sam.
commanteer
This is too much. Who cares what inspired him? He is crazy. Why would any halfway serious journalist give a hoot about the particular delusions of this murderer? This is just giving more attention. Simply bury him... in a prison cell, in the ground, wherever. The world has no need to know anything more about him.
Yubaru
It's a kuchikomi article, meaning the writer is not even close to halfway serious and is just looking to stir the conspiracy pot.
shallots
GET THIS WHILE IT LASTS: I'm catching on with Kuchikomi! I don't get into J-media, but I kind of like it now for the "performance art" quality of Kuchikomi: Here's my take on what this "article" really says:
J-cast asks, J-cast asks, J-cast asks, J-cast asks...EUGENICS! reported a flood of tweets OH MY reported a flood of tweets OH NO reported a flood of tweets OH HEY reported a flood of tweets OH YAY reported a flood of tweets... "the killings"? (J-cast asks) The essence of Nazism (But, asks J-Cast News (July 27)) an extermination center (J-cast asks) K-U-C-H-I-K-O-M-I the Holocaust
reported a flood of tweets that discussed the evils of the Nazi program
ThePBot
Uhm, the Old Testament is also a Jewish invention, meaning the God in it is also a Jewish invention. Not just one commandment.
nath
If you are a journalist and want to know the truth, ask the perpetrator - if it's newsworthy and merits publication - but don't simply extemporise based on speculative scenarios. Kuchokomi is a waste of pixels.
shallots
This is a serious point, buried in the "flood of tweets." If you threaten to kill people, why is there no repercussion? Is it because there is no sufficient mechanism of public treatment for the mentally ill? Um...sorry...my mistake...back to tweets!
katsu78
While I totally agree with you about the quality of Kuchikomi, I do wonder why we're seeing this strong of a demand that we only stick to the killer's statement about their motives when we don't hear similar demands every time a killer named Ahmed or Abdullah is in the news.
Laptop_Warrior
Ah, anotherexpat@I don't think the Japanese police are going to arrange for a press conference for him. But the media might get to use his response to the question, "Do you have anything to say before the execution is carried out?" That's several years down the road of course.
MsDelicious
I just looked at the fine print for users at this site as I do not want to offend anyone.
I exist because of a boat in the 1890's.
This man is sick and needs help. Perhaps the Jewish Community in nTokyo can give him talking therapy.
Nessie
In the Hebrew, the fifth commandment is "Thou shalt not murder." Legal killing is sanctioned by Yahweh.
cleo
He did a fair bit of it himself, according to the Old Testament.
Scrote
Shallots: If you threaten to kill people, why is there no repercussion?
Because that would mean the police would have to arrest the fascists who parade around Tokyo calling for Koreans to be killed. Instead, they offer tacit support by standing by and doing nothing.
sangetsu03
If you translate the commandment more exactly, it states "thou shalt not murder." There is a rather large difference between killing and murdering.
As for eugenics, it was not a nazi invention. America was at the forefront of the eugenics movement, which in America, mainly involved sterilizing the mentally disabled, or feeble-minded, so as not to increase the numbers of their offspring. Eugenics was a widely believed science in the early 20th, with the majority of scientists, and many of the greatest minds of the time being ardent supporters of the "science" of eugenics. Euthanasia of the disabled and mentally unfit was a principle widely preached by the eugenics movement, but not put into wide practice until the nazis. But the extent to which the nazis took eugenics woke up the world to the horror and inhumanity of the so-called science, and it vanished into the pages of history.
Nessie
Eugenics has been practiced for all of human history.
Wakarimasen
I thought he told us that he thought he was doing them a favour. Or did I mistranlslate the TV reports?
1glenn
The assumption that one person is inherently so much better that he or she is entitled to kill at will is very frightening. In this instance the individual under discussion believed that it is was OK to murder developmentally handicapped persons, but throughout history we have seen any number of categories of humans qualified as "unfit."
Phil Smy
The focus should not be on the reasons of an insane person, the focus should be on the supposedly sane people who had so much advance warning yet couldn't prevent this. They should be held responsible. I haven't seen any stories about that yet.
Patrick Kimura-Macke
The theory of eugenics originated in the United States and was put into practice by the Nazi government.